Introduction and Guest Introduction

 [00:00:00] 

Laurence Pratt: Hello and welcome to a fantastic episode of the ADHD Goals podcast. My guest today is Nicola Rose, and she is a film director and writer from New York City, and she has most recently completed her second film, which is Magnetosphere, it’s a coming of age comedy about growing up, neurodivergent with synesthesia, and, I had the pleasure of watching it, last week with my daughters. and yeah, it was a fantastic movie and I’m really excited to, talk to you about it. So, first of all, how are you today, Nicola?

Nicola Rose: Okay. I’m okay. Thank you. How are you?

Laurence Pratt: Yeah, really good.

a bit hot and sticky because it’s a little bit of a heat wave here, but, apart from that, I can’t complain because it’s nice. It’s summer.

Nicola Rose: It is something.

Discussing the Film ‘Magnetosphere’

Laurence Pratt: So, how’s it been going since the [00:01:00] release of the film? what have you been busy with? Lots of promotion.

Nicola Rose: Yeah, the, you know, the promotion for, truly independent films that have, you know, no studio backing whatsoever and they don’t have, therefore lots of money, a large publicity machine. The publicity is largely word of mouth, which means appearing on podcasts that have something to do with the subject.

It means writing articles about the film. It means, you know, getting as many, critical reviews as possible, even if they’re negative, and I’m very lucky. They’ve all really all been positive or mainly been positive. They’ve been wonderful. all of that is, is word of mouth, and that’s how the, the word about, indie independent films gets around because it’s, you know, you’re going to have to hear about them from other people ultimately.

Laurence Pratt: I be, I mean. 

Nicola’s ADHD Diagnosis Journey

Laurence Pratt: Before we get into talking about the movie itself, I just wanted to, you know, ask you about your, you know, your own ADHD. ’cause, I understand that you, recently, got a diagnosis.

Laurence Pratt: I wonder if [00:02:00] you could just sort of tell me how that, happened.

Nicola Rose: Sure. I was working with a therapist and I started to suspect, this was after the fact of having directed the movie. there are certain activities that I am really devoted to, directing, being one of them where I could be working on a project for hours and hours at a time and hyper-focused and have no idea that I need to, you know.

My mind needs to not feel as though my mind needs to wander onto other things. But that’s not the norm. The norm is that I will need to do 25 things at once, and that my mind will need to wander and that I will not be able to concentrate on any of the things that I’m doing. But, you know, and I.

Sometimes it’s because they’re not interesting. Other times it’s because even if they are interesting, I simply can’t keep the focus on one spot. And I don’t think I’ve ever been able to, except for a very few very specific, Activities, directing me, one of them [00:03:00] writing being another, and I’m not sure there are others, but there, there probably are.

There’s probably one or two, but it’s short. It’s a short list. and so I, I asked my therapist, you know, if we were in the midst of figuring different things out that were going on with me. this being just sort of one of them, I said, why don’t we test me for autism and ADHD, while we’re at it?

And I was pretty sure that I was not autistic, but I do have some traits, or especially as a child, I had some traits that now, you know, at the time no, but now would be considered to be on the autistic spectrum and. I was curious to know if nowadays I would receive a diagnosis. I didn’t. because I really didn’t qualify, you know, trusting my therapist as I do, I think it was valid.

I think I may have some mildly spectrum traits, none of which I didn’t know about already, but I did come away with diagnosis of ADHD, and that [00:04:00] made a lot of sense to me because even when. You know, I can force it, I can force the attention to go on to one thing, but it’s not natural to me. And I don’t know how natural it is to anybody to, you know, just be able to, I had, I once lived with somebody, when one of my, one of my, roommates in, one of my former, one of my former roommates, who was able to watch.

Television programs, she was able to watch anything on tv, even if it wasn’t anything necessarily she wanted to watch. She was just able to watch anything on TV and hyper focus. Stare at that and be interested only in that and look only at that and apparently be thinking only about that. And I would look at that and almost be creeped out and think, how can you do that?

Because my whole life, if I was watching tv, I would also need to be drawing, or I would also need to be writing, or I would also need to be. You know, composing an email. I don’t know. I can’t do one thing at a time. I can’t.[00:05:00] 

Laurence Pratt: Yeah.

Nicola Rose: So yeah, it elephant in the room. I don’t know how it works. It might be very different.

Laurence Pratt: I, TV is an odd thing. if I was watching TV that was just, you know, trash TV

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: something that somebody else had chosen, then maybe I would be like, oh, a bit fidgety and doing other things. But I think when it comes to tv, I tend to. specific things like documentaries or crime dramas, like really bad crime dramas.

Nicola Rose: They really focus you though. they like.

Laurence Pratt: that’s it. My, my brain is trying to solve the problem and it’s like I knew it. I’m writing down like it’s gonna be that person.

Nicola Rose: So they’re just designed to manipulate you into paying the most focused attention you’ve ever paid to anything in your life. It’s just, it’s awful. They’re very cynical about how they do it.

Exploring Neurodivergence in Film

Laurence Pratt: But I was, So given that, you only got your diagnosis fairly recently and you’d already written and directed [00:06:00] the film, and I was listening to, another interview that you gave on a podcast that, and you mentioned that your first movie actually resonated quite a lot with, the Neurodiverse community

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: and, I mean, I’m gonna ask you why you thought that might be, but you think that. Because now that you know that you know, you are neurodiversity, you’ve got ADHD, you think that maybe it was something that you were drawn to and that experience of someone living a life, you know, Oh, no.

Nicola Rose: Oh yeah. No, I think that was absolutely it. I think you know, my, my other feature film, which has been out for. Three years now I think, which is called Good by Patricia, and which is streaming, all over the world. I think on at least a couple platforms. Amazon Prime to be Google Play.

I forget. Definitely Prime. oh, YouTube as well. It’s like a YouTube movies thing. You can watch it on. I think. I don’t know that I was thinking about, oh, let’s, [00:07:00] I definitely wasn’t thinking, let’s write a movie about a neurodiverse character. that was magnetosphere, that was specifically, that was about a child with synesthesia.

That was, you know, but I. I think, you know, at the risk of sounding oh, I think I’m so special, which is not what I’m trying to say, it’s specifically not what I’m saying. But I definitely did always have this uncomfortable, and I mean really uncomfortable feeling since I was like old enough to be aware of these things of being not quite the same as most other people that I ran into.

Nicola Rose: This is not to, again, you run into people who they self compliment with this, that I’m so special, I’m so wonderful, I’m so much better than everybody. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I felt uncomfortable and I still feel uncomfortable. And that’s basically all that I’m saying. And, I think goodbye, Patricia was much more based on, I don’t, you know, I think it was much more based on [00:08:00] events that I had.

experience than Magnetosphere was, and therefore there’s a lot more of me. It’s interesting because the character is not really based on me, but the life events are, and therefore by, by just virtue of that, some of the characters’ reactions are based on reactions I had,

Nicola Rose: and I just thought, well. Here’s this character who’s kind of odd.

She has her own quirks, she’s got these reactions. This is how the story goes. And then I started hearing from all the, I started hearing a couple different things that resonated stuck with me. But I think the thing I heard the most was, I’m autistic. And seeing this representation of an autistic young woman on screen just resonated with me so much.

My God. Finally, a character who, who acts like me. And, you know, it was completely unintentional. And, uh, you know, I think I told people that when I would receive those comments, I’d be like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. You know, I didn’t necessarily intend that, but Great. I do see it because here’s this character [00:09:00] who has a couple of hyper-focused, hyper interests.

Who really doesn’t deviate from a couple extremely important things that are extremely important to her, but to nobody else and who’s. Routine and life sort of end up revolving around these obsessions. it’s very easy to see it, and I’m not saying that all autistic or all neurodivergent people act this way by any means, but I could see why people were seeing themselves in that.

I could see why neurodivergent people, the ones who wrote to me, were perhaps seeing themselves in that character.

Laurence Pratt: I had a recent experience. It was sort of, I suppose, similar to somebody. Writing to you and saying about your first movie was like a great, depiction of someone being autistic. I was listening to, a Radiohead concert. I mean, when I, you know, when I was in my teens and twenties, like I was a huge radio.

I’m still am, but I mean, you know, in my connection to listening to music is not as much as it was. So I [00:10:00] listened to, you know, I spent an evening just listening, watching maybe a Glastonbury, gig. And I listened to the lyrics for the first time in ages and since, you know, I’ve, you know, been diagnosed with, ADHD myself and learning all about it and understanding and, you know, and so I was listening to the RICS and I thought. I think Tom York must be ADHD because all these lyrics are connected to the similar, you know, a lot of the

Nicola Rose: You felt familiar.

Laurence Pratt: dysphoria and, yeah. I mean, I mean, maybe if I listen back and I haven’t had a beer, I’ll probably go, oh, no, that wasn’t right.

Nicola Rose: It depends on the moment. Depends on.

Laurence Pratt: So, let’s talk, more about the movie specifically.

Synesthesia and Its Representation

Laurence Pratt: so the character, the main character in the movie has syn anesthesia, and I wonder if you can tell the audience, specifically what that condition is.

Nicola Rose: Yeah, so synesthesia is a neurodivergence or perceptual [00:11:00] phenomenon or condition where your senses are combined or intertwined in some ways, such that one sensory input gives many sensory outputs more than it might in a neurotypical person. So, for example, you might end up seeing sound or hearing color, or. feeling that the days of the week have a certain color or texture or feelings, have a color or feelings, have a texture, or it goes on and on. And there are like literally hundreds of potential combinations and, you know, manifestations of this thing. And, um, yeah. Synesthesia is, it’s Greek for something like combined senses.

Laurence Pratt: I mean, it is a fascinating, topic really.

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: and there was part of the movie where, I mean. At the, you know, the beginning, she doesn’t know that she, has this, and it’s only later on that she gets diagnosed, and throughout the movie.

Therefore, she masks a lot, which is obviously very similar to people [00:12:00] with ADHD. and I wonder, if there was a moment where she was trying to, and you know, she has to try and explain it to other people, quite a lot. And I feel that, you know, quite similar to trying to explain, you know, ADHD to somebody who is neurotypical. It’s, I mean, with synesthesia it’s wow, that’s, I can’t imagine that. But the opposite is true of, ADHD, because. An executive dysfunction. Everybody can have, you know, executive, you know, experience executive dysfunction, but they go oh yeah, well, everybody’s got a bit of that.

You’re just pretending. So, but it was so, wonder, you know, again, with your experience of sort of, having ADHD, but not knowing it, you know, that, that sense of masking, like how much attention did you pay to that in, in the story?

Nicola Rose: It was sort of, always in the background of everything that this character was doing because I think once you are old enough, and 13 is just the sort of the beginning years of that, at [00:13:00] least in my experience, it’s just sort of the earliest part of when you start to become aware that, something is different about you, something is off and people are finding that it’s off and people are, you know.

N what is the, they’re zooming in on that. They’re like, they’re zooming in on that one way or another. They’re finding that something about you is off, is different. I think the automatic thing that you do is you start masking whether it’s like, and I’m trying to think how you think about it at that age.

It’s not necessarily things that happen in the movie, but it’s stuff like, I will try to start mimicking the speech patterns of neurotypical because you can tell who’s neurotypical, even if you don’t have language for it, you as a neurodivergent person can immediately tell who is not. Maybe you’re wrong, but you know, you probably know.

So, you, I don’t wanna say that you’re necessarily right. You’re not an expert, you are not a psychiatrist. But, you have a sense of who is popular. You have a sense of who is being left alone by the bullies. You have a sense of who is [00:14:00] accepted and you are not. And so, you know, if you have, kids, I dunno, other kids, other adults, if you have people who are picking on you, people who are calling you, ugly people who are whatever it might be, I don’t know, I’m making stuff up.

But you, your response is going to be to try to imitate the people that you see as the most acceptable and normal. Not because you actually want to be like those people, but because you are trying to be left alone. And I think in my case at that. Age, it was like, I will try to dress like people that seem normal.

I will try to imitate as much as I can. The speech patterns and the behavioral, not works, but that’s, it’s the opposite of quirk, the behavioral normalcy of people who seem accepted and it is a put on. And if you’re a very good sort of actor, not in a professional sense, but if you’re, you know, you can.

You can [00:15:00] mimic and I’m a very good mimic and I think a lot of neurodivergent people tend to be very good mimics. I think they can,

Laurence Pratt: no, I remember exactly that thing and all ba all based on what you’re saying. There’s that sense that I think it comes from the world valuing the society that we live

Nicola Rose: yes.

Laurence Pratt: seems to value and accept, I’m doing air quotes, but normal, behaviors

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: and I think you very quickly understand that, oh, I’m, I don’t seem to do that so well, or I don’t seem to handle, you know, rejection and things like that so well, so I just wanna be accepted and yeah.

You know, whether that’s being funny to diver. Attention from bullies or, you know, or trying to look normal or look like the popular people, you know, mimicking. It is such a big aspect of that.

Nicola Rose: people can’t mimic well at all. That’s the other part of it is that some people are either so neurodiverse or it’s not necessarily degree, it’s just that, that

Nicola Rose: you don’t have a chance in. You don’t, that you have no, you snowball’s chance in hell of being [00:16:00] able to imitate normal people

Laurence Pratt: But

Nicola Rose: or what people

Laurence Pratt: but.

Nicola Rose: as normal people.

Laurence Pratt: I suppose the cost of that though is the more you’re trying to mimic and be like other people is that you are, the less you are being your true self and or even sort of accepting and acknowledging what that is you are almost, you know, not concentrating on the things that you are great at, but trying to be better at the things that you are bad at.

Nicola Rose: You spend so much time focusing on the things that you’re relatively bad at in the sense that you mean it’s, it is, it’s really kind of sad. You, it’s a survival, instinct. It’s a survival mechanism. You If bad people left you alone, if bullies left you alone, you would not be spending time trying to protect yourself in, I’m talking about when you’re a child, but there are forms of this that continue well into adulthood.

Laurence Pratt: yeah.

Nicola Rose: 20, 20 and more years here, but, Yeah. You spend [00:17:00] so much time just trying to self-protect and it’s time that could have been spent on becoming better at what think things that you do well and you’re not necessarily even aware that you do anything well because so much of your energy is put into, trying not to be attacked.

Laurence Pratt: Yeah, I think, you know, we tend to think of, you know, bullying only happening at school, but it certainly still

Nicola Rose: Oh.

Laurence Pratt: in the workplace. And I think here in the UK we call it banter, but I mean, you know, that sort of people just being, you know, funny, but it can, you know, it can be quite oppressive and, disruptive.

Nicola Rose: A gentle term.

Character Development and Casting

Laurence Pratt: so I, I noticed that, and I dunno if this is intentional, but there’s quite a few characters within the movie who also seem to be a. In some way on the outside or outsiders or sort of working through some things themselves. And I wonder, if you could talk about that a little bit.

Nicola Rose: I think it is quite intentional. I mean, I didn’t [00:18:00] necessarily plan it that way, but I think as the script was, as I was writing the script, as the script was evolving, it became clear that probably all of these people were, if not specifically neurodivergent, that they were, as you say, they were all trying to work through something that put them on something that.

Had put them on the outside of what is normally regarded as, typical

Nicola Rose: normal? I don’t know that there’s anybody in there that’s, I mean, some, a few characters we don’t get to know as well, which is unfortunate because there’s probably, you know, more interesting things about them that we don’t get to necessarily.

No. But yeah, I think there’s.

Laurence Pratt: there’s a, there’s the character who’s played by Steven. He, who he has dyslexia in it.

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: there’s the father who has in real life has ADHD.

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: but he’s dealing with some, like a lot of stress.

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: then there’s this very curious character played by, Colin Mockery, [00:19:00] who I guess must be sort of some PTSD or something, but

Nicola Rose: Could be you. It could be just, that’s one explanation and hard to know. It could be just the way he is. I’ts difficult to know it is so difficult to know.

Laurence Pratt: So, with the cast, I mean, like I said, my, my daughters are really big fans of, Steven. He, and when I told them that, I was gonna be doing this interview, they were like, oh, can we make, they were somehow, they wanted to meet Steven. He,

Nicola Rose: I know

Nicola Rose: that’s I’m so sorry. I’m disappoint. I’m only meeting the director. No good.

Laurence Pratt: Oh, no, I definitely want, definitely

Nicola Rose: no.

Laurence Pratt: to chat to you, but, they were, they just assumed that, I would then automatically, you know, just be able to just hang out with him. But I was also watching it from the point of view of being a huge fan of Colin Mockery, from, watching in my childhood, whose line is it?

Anyway, and of course as well, Patrick McKenna and. So how did it, feel you know, [00:20:00] as an independent, movie maker to sort of get, some of those big names?

Nicola Rose: You know, I went in hoping that they would, hoping that just one of them might say yes. I didn’t, it didn’t, every single person who was up there was my first choice to play their role, and I really didn’t. Assume at any point that they would all say yes, I didn’t think that would happen, but, I was very lucky.

Laurence Pratt: Yeah. Well, that, it must have been a great experience to work with them all.

Nicola Rose: It was wonderful. They’re wonderful people, like all of these people that you see on the screen, all of these actors are just thoroughly, this is the icing on the cake because, you know, all that you need to know is that they do their job well. They play their characters well, but they’re all just also thoroughly good people.

Laurence Pratt: I, there was a character in there, the teacher and she plays a very. Interesting role. I mean, when I chat to, a lot of, people that work with, either work with parents or teachers,[00:21:00] who are their children are Neurodiverse, they quite often talk about how. it can be to get the right support in schools and the teacher in your movie was a really wonderful, character and advocate for, you know, the girl who had the synesthesia. I wonder if you could talk about her at all important it was for her to be that.

Nicola Rose: Yeah, absolutely. So, the character of, Ms. Dearing, the art teacher, played by Deborah McGrath in the movie, she originally. I think in other iterations of the script before it landed, where it landed, I think the teacher also had synesthesia. I wanna say that was. Where that was going. And ultimately it was a little too on the nose.

She didn’t really need to have synesthesia. She just needed to, and it was actually, to me, it was more impactful that she simply just be paying attention and be aware of, um, what was going on with all these, what [00:22:00] was going on with, not just with Maggie, but perhaps she’s very aware of what’s going on with.

All of the children around her and I have this feeling that she probably does know, you know, different things that all of these kids are dealing with. And that she’s just this sort of hyper observant kind of person. And knowing about synesthesia was just, you know, by chance, she happened to be aware.

Laurence Pratt: Yeah. And I think, you know, it kind of, gives you hope that, you know, I mean, I think in, you know, in the, I would say the olden days, but when I was younger and before, you know. Any behavior that wasn’t sort of compliant or obedient would’ve been considered, you know, a naughty chart.

And, there’s often, quite often not enough patients to behavior that, you know, is disruptive or not, you know, cooperative. But then be able to say, okay, I wonder what’s going on there. and

Nicola Rose: For reason.

Laurence Pratt: the benefit of the doubt to say, you know, this child is not trying to be, awkward or whatever.

I wonder what could [00:23:00] be, you know, causing that. And,

Nicola Rose: There may be an actual reason. Yeah. Actually important reason.

Laurence Pratt: so, I think I, I read as well or that you had some experience of synesthesia when you were a child.

Nicola Rose: Yeah, but I only figured that out as I was, interviewing people to put together the movie. So that was a, that came as a complete surprise. It wasn’t like, oh, I had synesthesia as a child. So I think I will make a movie about my experiences. I like to think that with Goodbye, Patricia, which was, you know, my, my first feature film that I got that whole thing of let’s put my own experiences into a movie.

I like to think I got that out of my system. ’cause I think, you know, ideally you get one of those and then hopefully you get past that urge. I, you know, I don’t speak for everybody. Some people’s experiences are perhaps more interesting, but anyway, I think that I might never have remembered this [00:24:00] business.

This business of having synesthesia as a child, if somebody hadn’t said to me somewhere along the way, something about musical instruments and synesthesia, and I had this experience of seeing music, but it was very limited. I think it was limited to one piece of music, I’m not sure. 

Reflecting on Early Experiences

Nicola Rose: But I think it was this very limited experience, when I was really young.

Five or six. I don’t remember anything else, other than that. So I think it was. Specific. I think it was concentrate. I think it was limited. but it was cool. It was cool to realize, oh, I, you know, this experience, this is something I actually had, this isn’t, entirely from imagination and just sort of outside interest.

Understanding Synesthesia

Laurence Pratt: I think, the doctor the movie said, you know, there’s a school of thought that, maybe we all, have, synesthesia and then the brain sort of then divides, you know, the sensations into departments

Nicola Rose: Yes.

Laurence Pratt: settles down.

Nicola Rose: [00:25:00] That’s correct. Yeah. think that is, I mean, unless it has changed since I wrote research, the movie, I think the going theory is that before the age of about four months old, that we do all have, sort of we all of our senses in one compartment, and then after four months. In most people, the senses go off and sort of separate into their own boxes, into their own compartments.

But in, some people, these end up being the syn seats. They all the senses stay in the same, or not all the senses, but more than one sense stays in the same bucket, the way it would have with everybody when they were a baby. I don’t know if it’s true. I know it’s a, the idea.

Hallucinogenics and Sensory Experiences

Laurence Pratt: It’s, it is, it’s, I’m now having an inappropriate side thought about hallucinogenics just thinking, I wonder

Nicola Rose: Oh,

Laurence Pratt: happens if they connect synapses and stuff.

Nicola Rose: absolutely. No, I think, you know, my understanding is that, hallucinogenics can [00:26:00] induce it. It’s not really synesthesia because it’s to actually be synesthesia, it would have to be something that like stays with you for a. Long amount of time, not just the time that somebody’s, you know, having a trip, but I think, I think they can, from what I understand, they can reproduce or, approximate, people’s experience.

What syn some of what synesthesia might feel like, especially auditory visual synesthesia.

Laurence Pratt: I mean, yeah, I mean, I mean, I’m trying not to talk about recreational drugs experiences, but, there certain, certainly does. So I hear, make you feel and connect to, to, feelings and emotions or sensations that you perhaps wouldn’t have so readily available. But, yeah, I’m not in any way recommending, that.

Nicola Rose: Yeah. no, not endorsing it here, but I do think there is. I do think these things, you know, it certainly isn’t synesthesia, but I think some of the senses, some of the sensory experiences can be [00:27:00] reproduced, but whether or not they’re anything like actual synesthesia, it would be impossible to tell because you’re dealing with, different experiences between different people and it’s not something that you can really, you know, compare.

Female Representation in Neurodiversity

Laurence Pratt: wonder, obviously as we’ve sort of outlined, you know, the main character Maggie, she is a, she’s a teenage girl. And do. the more and more I do this podcast and the more people I speak to, especially, females and talking about the female experience of, ADHD, in as much as, you know, you know, if you go back 30 years, you know, the only diagnosis you would’ve got would’ve been, you know, for typical, for boys. And so there wasn’t really any research or understanding of how, how it manifested with within, girls. So

Nicola Rose: No.

Laurence Pratt: was it to you to have. A representation of a female’s experience, particularly a young girl’s experience of,

Nicola Rose: Okay.

Laurence Pratt: being neurodiverse.

Nicola Rose: It’s so important because as you say, it’s [00:28:00] still, even though we are entering an era where, or we have already, where people are, have become aware that yes, this happens in girls. It just, it’s highly masked and it’s therefore harder to notice than it might be in, a male with an equivalent. neurodivergence.

It’s still not really understood. I don’t think it’s really accepted or known widely in the same way that. Women can have the same neurodivergence as men, and that, they might just look very different. I think, you know, especially in the media, obviously now we’re talking about fictional people, but we see so little, representation of neurodivergent, women and girls in the media, which I’ve talked about in nearly all these interviews.

And, you know, I started getting to think, I got to thinking about like, why is this? And I think. It’s an opinion. It’s not a fact, but I think it’s because women are still expected to be perfect. And there’s still this idea that if you have some sort of neurodivergence that makes you act some kind of quirky way, [00:29:00] that on some level that.

You’re ruined at that point, you’re damaged, you’re not perfect. So you’re not a real woman. You’re not really good as a woman. It’s, it would, you know, you won’t find people actually saying those words, but it is the message that you get and that you get from the time you’re really young, that you’re not a real girl because you laugh funny and you’re not a real girl because you act funny or you don’t react the same way other people react or you know.

The way you speak gets imitated in a mocking way, in a derisive way, and the way you move gets imitated and, and, it’s different. 

Challenges and Double Standards

Nicola Rose: I’m not saying boys don’t get bullied and vitiated emotionally and otherwise and this and ways that are just as bad ’cause they absolutely do. but it’s interesting how, if I, this is the example I tend to go back to.

I have seen male directors have absolute meltdowns on set where they just decide, and maybe there’s a reason, maybe there’s not, I don’t know, but they decide I’m going to have a. [00:30:00] Rageful tantrum now, you know, everybody get out of my way. This is all about me. I’m going to blow up now. And or camera people happens with crew as well.

And everybody does sort of get out of the way. And when they rationalize this, which happens very quickly. Almost, they all, everybody goes almost immediately to saying, well, it only happened because this person is such a genius. He’s so creative, he’s so wildly intelligent, and deep and thoughtful, and he works so hard and this is why he’s upset.

Especially if it’s an attractive male. The connection to genius is made so quickly and you think, how’d you get there? But it’s almost instant. Whereas if anyone who is any, if a female has even a moment of frustration and I mean mild frustration, why did that happen? You know, moment of frustration.

Less than that, less than what I just sort of imitated.[00:31:00] 

Laurence Pratt: Yeah.

Nicola Rose: They’re accused of having tantrum, meltdowns, screaming, kicking and screaming. And, you know, they’re threatened with being fired. Maybe they are fired. Their behavior was just so, they were hysterical. They were out of line. They were practically, you know, practically physically abusing people on set.

Laurence Pratt: I mean, even, I mean, you said the word hysterical. That, I mean, that is, you know, connected to hysteria and his, you know, hysteria. It’s associated with a female behavior, as in wrongly obviously. but that’s, you know, the world, you know, the patriarchy that we’ve, we live in, we’ve associated, you know, women, you know, craziness. So I think yeah, you’re absolutely right. And, and it is very valuable to, to sort of experience, you know, see, more, from the female perspective of, people living with, different conditions.

Nicola Rose: It’s important that we see all these [00:32:00] things represented and in all different sorts of kinds of people because just seeing it represented is a really good first step. But if you only see Neurodivergence represented in one kind of person, it’s going to be wrongly assumed that it only occurs in one kind of person, and that’s going.

Future Plans and Taking a Break

Laurence Pratt: So what is ahead for you? I mean obviously you’re still promoting the film, but have you got any plans, for future films or anything that you’re writing?

Nicola Rose: At the moment, no, but that could change. At the moment I am sort of taking a break. I’m temporarily in, in Massachusetts where, I’m just sort of taking a. An extended sabbatical from filmmaking and who knows? I keep saying to people who knows, I, you know, I, I might pop up again. I might end up doing something different.

I went very quickly from doing one film into doing another. And, before that I actually never talk about this anymore. I did four short films. So it’s, I have [00:33:00] been pretty much continuously doing. A film of some kind since 2017 when I did my first, let’s make a film at my house.

Kind of, you know, web series made on no money. So, you know, it’s probably time for a break and hopefully this time next year, I will have the next steps underway, but at the moment it’s, I’ve needed a break on many levels. It’s hard to predict.

Balancing Creativity and Workflow

Laurence Pratt: that, that makes me think about another question now in, in terms of, you know. You say, ha having a break and how do you cope with, you know, a work? gonna say the word workflow, but

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: working on something that is a creative, pursuit. And, you know, I imagine that when you are, you’re writing, it’s a, it is a solo thing.

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: and then once you are, you know, editing, you know, the creating the movie, then that becomes like a team thing.

Nicola Rose: Yes. Oh, absolutely. Editing. Yeah. [00:34:00] Yeah. Long story short, yes, you’re right.

Laurence Pratt: Sorry. but,

Nicola Rose: Correcting. Yes, definitely.

Laurence Pratt: so how do you. How do you know, how do you cope? And I wonder how much of you, how are you doing it successfully?

How much of you, of what you do you recognize that you know, you need to take a break or you need to have the ability to change between those things? ’cause it’s good for you to experience different things and before you get bored or whatever. So what’s that like?

Nicola Rose: It’s a wonderful question, and I think only neurodivergent people would ask these questions because you know firsthand how hard it is for you to realize you need a break. You can go for, you could probably go for days and nights if you didn’t need to sleep or eat. And in fact, your body sometimes won’t tell you need to sleep or eat.

But because if you get hyper-focused on one of the few things that is really important to you, let’s say that’s video editing, which is just one random example. I happen to have training as a film editor. It’s not something that I see myself as, but it’s something that I can get [00:35:00] very fixated on.

And I could probably just, if you know. Like human needs did not intervene. It is probably something that I could just end up like needing to do and needing to do and needing to do for like days and weeks at a time needing to keep going. And it would take somebody coming in on the outside and saying. Hey, you know, come away from this for a minute.

You’ve gotta eat food. And, it is so easy to become hyperfocused. On the things that matter to you. Whereas, with ADHD when you’re dealing with, which is most of the time when you’re dealing with things that don’t so much matter to you, you’re all over the place. I don’t know about you, but I find I’m scattered beyond measure.

Laurence Pratt: Yeah, I mean, we, it

Nicola Rose: Just don’t care.

Laurence Pratt: until there’s either a deadline or if the thing that you’re doing has an impact on someone else, then that can be the, you know, thing that I need to get it done. But if it’s only gonna, you know, make me suffer, if I don’t do it, then that’s when it goes to the back of the queue.

Nicola Rose: That can, [00:36:00] yeah, that can send it to the back.

Laurence Pratt: Yeah.

Directing and Writing Experiences

Laurence Pratt: and how. obviously you wrote this and directed it and, and wonder how important is it for you to have control of those two things? Have you experienced something where you’ve directed something that’s been written some by somebody else or you’ve handed over something you’ve written for somebody else to direct?

And how does that feel?

Nicola Rose: I have had both experiences and, you know, when you’re a director for hire you, that’s what you are aiming to do, is like you’re directing somebody else’s work. So that’s, sort of par for the course. In terms of handing over something I had written for somebody else to direct, that happened only once or twice, which is when I was, it was actually one of my, very earliest first experiences.

When I was making, you know, I referred to let’s make a movie at my house. Like my first experience ever doing anything. It was a web series [00:37:00] 10 years ago, nearly 10 years ago that, yeah. I was doing with friends in New York. I was lucky enough that I had people who were willing to let me do this.

Basically fail at it a lot, basically mess up a lot. And friends who were willing to be with me on that project and just enjoy the ride. And I guess they, they took it on faith that I would figure out what I was doing at the end of it, which I did, but I certainly didn’t. I had no clue what I was doing.

No, I mean, no, no idea. And so, I do remember. Handing over the first couple of episodes. ’cause they were divided up into two minute, three minute episodes. This was before there were really reels and videos of, but anyway, it’s, it was like a longer form of what would be now considered a skit, I guess in, in the modern times.

But anyway, I would, I remember handing that stuff over to, um, I think at that time I felt the cameraman somehow directed.

Laurence Pratt: [00:38:00] Yeah.

Nicola Rose: confused.

Laurence Pratt: Yeah,

Nicola Rose: this is not, these things do not necessarily go together. But anyway, you know, I handed them over to the folks that I had doing camera and said, well, you know, I’m doing several other, I’m wearing several other hats as they say on this thing.

So why don’t you, why don’t you direct this? And I am sure. That there are directors out there that I would love to have direct, stuff that I’ve written. I’m not saying there aren’t, but this was the wrong decision and it actually taught me very quickly, oh no, just, oh my gosh. There’s no reason you can’t direct the thing you’ve written.

It’s actually much harder to direct yourself as an actor than it is to direct the thing you’ve written. You’ve already written it. You’re not writing then and there it’s, it. They’re not. They’re not simultaneous. They’re, what is the word for, they’re asynchronous. They’re, yeah. There’s no reason you can’t do that.

And I wasn’t, setting out or like planning to become a director or oh, I, you know, [00:39:00] I think this will get me going. I think I just wanted to make a movie,

Nicola Rose: you the truth. I think I just wanted to like, see if I could make a movie

Laurence Pratt: Yeah.

Nicola Rose: and it didn’t occur to me. Well, maybe you should just direct it then, rather than trying to like.

Hire people to, I don’t know. I figured it out. I or not. I’m still figuring it out. I don’t know.

Laurence Pratt: I mean, I think that’s a. I personally, I think it’s, definitely something similar to me is, you know, I’ll watch something, I’ll see something on the internet or on TV,

Nicola Rose: Yeah.

Laurence Pratt: and I’ll just think I’d like to do that. And then. For a while, it becomes like, I, my life will only be complete if I learn how to do this.

I mean, from an optimistic point of view, I think it’s, you know, it’s good to have that, you know, there’s different things in your life and, and to prove to yourself that you, and, you know, you can do these things and it’s, you know, it’s a positive.

Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers

Nicola Rose: ‘s a funny thing you should say to be able to do these different things because one thing that people have asked me a lot, I [00:40:00] think because the film has to do with the young girl and because, maybe female director is still some. Vague novelty of some kind. They said, what advice would you give to you know, a young girl who wants to do this stuff?

And I was like, well, first of all, none of them want to direct. That comes later. They don’t, they wanna act right now though. They don’t wanna direct nobody. Nobody grows up thinking, I think I’ll direct, you know, not when you’re 11, not when you’re 10. But I think, you know, you mentioned knowing how to do a variety of things, and I think that is the most important, I think the best possible scenario.

Is that you grow up and you’re not just interested in one thing. You’re not like hyper-focused on the arts. But that you also take some time to, learn a sport that you, not, that you have to be good at it, just that you take time to devote to it. That’s just that you also take classes in the sciences and that you pick a science that you want to learn more about and that you.

I keep wanting to say divide and conquer, and that’s not quite the expression I’m looking for, but that you spread your interests [00:41:00] over a variety of things rather than becoming like hyper-focused on just the one thing.

Laurence Pratt: I think, yeah, I mean, I think, I mean we spoke about the word super bear and sort of how sometimes it’s good to use it and sometimes not, but I, if I was to say, what I thought. You know, ADHD, it has as a superpower element, it’s that ability to be distracted and be interested in other things because of the novelty that it provides. And in that moment, it may not provide you with anything useful to be interested in that, but over the period of your life and time, it gives you a lot of random things that are floating about that at one day you will be able to connect. In a way that a neurotypical person won’t be able to. And that is why, people in the creative arts are so often, people that, you know, ADHD, you know, comedians, directors, writers, all this kind of thing, because, you know, they can see the big picture very quickly and [00:42:00] then, you know, make it into a reality.

I mean, it often helps that they do have people that can support them in the detail orientated things.

Nicola Rose: The better of a tribe. You have the, yeah. The more of a tribe you have, the better.

Laurence Pratt: And as well, I mean, just, I wrote this down earlier because you said, you said, and I think it’s important to, this is the ability to fail. When you were talking about.

Nicola Rose: Oh yeah.

Laurence Pratt: you know, movies for the web series and of quite often, you know, one of the saboteurs for an ADHD person is, you know, perfectionism. and

Nicola Rose: Oh.

Laurence Pratt: reject, rejected, you know, I mean, it’s different in different people, but, you know, RSD or, you know, rejection sensitivity of, you know, doing something that isn’t perfect is like a big thing. And that causes procrastination. And one of the things that I hear a lot and have understood myself is something I need to be better at is the ability to feel comfortable with failing otherwise, you know. You know, [00:43:00] you’re not gonna get very far if you don’t, if you keep stopping, if it’s not gonna,

Nicola Rose: No, this is fair. I don’t, that’s one that I don’t have, so I don’t actually know a lot about it because I failed so much, so early and was so like. There were so many things I wasn’t good at so early on, and I think I figured that out from such an early stage that I never really felt victim to perfectionism because I knew I was never going to achieve anything near perfection in anything I ever did.

Nicola Rose: So, I guess in a way I was lucky. I was kinda like, well, you know, it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.

Laurence Pratt: Well,I guess it’s, it is, it’s contributed to the, you know, the success that you’ve had so far. So, um, so well, well done to, just to wrap up then, cause we’re coming up to our time now. 

Where to Watch the Movie

Laurence Pratt: So, can you just tell, the listeners, where they can, access the movie? I mean, there’s, we always have listeners in the US and that, so,

Nicola Rose: Yes. So. Right now that it’s true that the movie is only available, but this is a temporary situation. It is [00:44:00] true. The movie is only available in North America at the moment. That will change. It will come to the uk, it will come to other places. I don’t know when, I just know that’s the plan is for the distributor to roll it out in different regions around the world.

Right now, if you’re in Canada, if you’re in the us, if you’re in Mexico, you can, access, watch the movie on, Amazon Prime. Or on Apple TV or on Google Play or on I, I forget the rest, but there are like nine or 10 other platforms. There are quite a few. Prime Video would be the best known and probably most, common one.

If you were to, if you were to go look for it, that would probably be the main place that you would find it.

Laurence Pratt: I suppose a few years ago that would’ve been an easier question to answer, but there’s so many different

Nicola Rose: It’s always.

Nicola Rose: I forget their names. It’s really difficult to keep track.

Laurence Pratt: An

Follow and Connect

Laurence Pratt: If any of the listeners want to learn more about you and follow you in any way, where would you point them to.

Nicola Rose: Oh yeah. Well, there are a couple places, so, if you’re on Instagram, and [00:45:00] and then you can follow the movie at, magnetosphere movie. And, I believe that is also, it’s the name of its Facebook page, it’s Magnetosphere movie and all of the news about like new regions that pops up in, you know, if it goes to the uk, if it goes to Australia and so forth, that stuff is gonna pop up there.

And, there is also a, I keep, I don’t keep it very well, but I keep a substack, like a blog, like a writing, an ongoing sort of place where I put writing pieces, um, which is nicola rose directs.substack.com. So there’s that’s also my Instagram. But really the movie is the one to follow because anything related to the film is gonna pop up on Magnetosphere movie.

Laurence Pratt: Well, great. Hey, it’s been a pleasure to, have the time to chat with you today and,

Nicola Rose: Thank you so much.

Laurence Pratt: like I say, love the movie and, I wish you all the best with, you know, its continued success and any, you know, the next project that you turn your attention to.[00:46:00] 

Nicola Rose: Thank you so much. We’ll see what that will be.

Laurence Pratt: Okay. Take care.

Nicola Rose: Thank you. You too. Bye-Bye. Laurence: Well there, we have it. Thank you so much for listening this far. If you want to hear more episodes, then please subscribe on YouTube or whatever podcast platform you use. It really helps us spread the word. So if you know anyone, this episode could help, then please share it with your friends. If you want to follow me on social media, I am on Instagram at ADHD underscore goals. And you can find me on Facebook too. If you want to get into touch with the show, then you can email me at hello@adhdgoals.co And finally, if you’re struggling to manage your ADHD and you would like me to be your coach, then please head over to my website and get in touch. Until next time. Bye for now.